Star Trek Beyond: a tale of two trailers

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In a long history of Star Trek movies, going all the way back to the original Motion Picture, this was the first one that I seriously thought about skipping:

I hate to see a good franchise shoot itself in the head, and by the looks of the trailer, Star Trek Beyond was going to do exactly that. The movie was directed by Justin Lin, who is partially responsible for the never-ending Fast & Furious series. Trekkies across the globe were a little worried about the director, given his track record to date, and the trailer didn’t help: I thought I was watching Fast & Furious 15 – Romulan Drift.  It looked like the film makers had missed their target audience by a light year. But rather than release the film and accuse the fanbase of being alien-hating mysognists (like the makers of the new Ghostbusters flick would have done), they revamped the trailer and tried again.

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Film review: Gods of Egypt (spoiler: it isn’t pretty)

I had a quick look at this movie a couple of months ago. At the time, it was generating a lot of negative feedback due to its… er… unfavourable optics. Gods of Egypt is on general release now, and I think it’s a kindness to say that the reviews are mixed. I went to see it yesterday, and unfortunately, the optics are only part of the problem.

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But let’s deal with them first shall we? This has nothing to do with whether or not Hollywood as a whole is doing enough to cast minorities in major roles (if you look at the stats, then they appear to be doing their bit); this is purely about this film, and in this film the casting is a massive issue.

Gods of Egypt is pure fantasy: it’s based around the idea that the Gods of ancient Egypt actually lived in Egypt. They adopted a very ‘hands-on’ management approach to running the world they created, striding around in their perfect ten-feet tall bodies with liquid gold for blood. The film-makers even portrayed the world as flat so that the audience is left in no doubt that none of this actually happened.

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